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Martin Paule's Micro Movie Reviews: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z-

Igby Goes Down
An opening scene in which our coming-of-age hero (Keiran Culkin) and his smug brother preside over their mother's (Susan Sarandon) assisted suicide suggests we're in black comedy territory. That suggestion proves falseóthis is a kinder, gentler film than it seems at first blush. Igby has been kicked out of all the best schools in America and harbors a self-destructive rage about his troubled upbringing. A perceptive script has the kids' spouting wryly-observant dialogue while the adults for the most part hew to platitudes and monstrously hypocritical dialogue. The supporting cast, including a note-perfect performance by Jeff Goldblum, is in top form. I came away with the feeling that I had caught a vision of Holden Caulfield updated for the New Millennium.

On The Ropes
In New York's Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood a boxing gym stands as an asylum amidst the poverty, violence and crack, offering a chance at escape and redemption. Though it is somewhat more scattershot in approach than the estimable Hoop Dreams, this documentary's focus on a group of young boxers and their coach, Harry, all struggling to escape troubled pasts, shares much of that film's pathos. Especially poignant is the story of a young woman who shows great promise but who is unable to attend the Golden Gloves Tournament because she is sentenced to prison for crack dealing on the day of her scheduled  bout. The film suggests that she is innocentóthe victim of an addict uncle's transgressions. A second case involves a young Mike Tyson lookalike whose head is turned by sleazy managers and promoters into forsaking his relationship with Harry, the former crack addict and convict who is the linchpin in this portmanteau of tragedy. The film suffers from a lack of clarityórelationships between some of the protagonists are unclear. Or perhaps that is simply the reality of the lives of these people living in hellish surroundings.

A Passage to India
David Lean's adaptation of the celebrated novel by E.M. Forster stands among the finest work of this director retaining the subtle and ambiguous qualities of the book. A young British woman (Judy Davis in a tremulous, neurasthenic performance) travels to India during the 1920s in the company of her adventurous mother in law to-be (the redoubtable Peggy Ashcroft). They reject the cloistered, repressed colonial life of their fellow Britons and pursue friendships with the "natives," in particular with a young Muslim doctor who is thrilled at the opportunity to hobnob with the memsahibs. He arranges an expedition to some caves, which leads to misunderstandings and tragedy. A tragicomic look at the manners of the day and the gathering storm clouds that presage Indian independence two decades later, this is a nearly perfect film flawed only by an inappropriately florid score by Maurice Jarre and Alec Guiness' portrayal of a Brahmin that verges on Peter Sellers territory.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
This is a nifty shocker that expertly ratchets up the tension as it goes along. The story concerns a woman (Rebecca DeMornay) who blames a family for the suicide of her husband and her own miscarriage. In a demented quest for revenge, she manages to get herself hired as a nanny for the family she perceives as the source of her tragedy. The film's ability to evoke growing menace in the context of sun-filled rooms with an almost sickeningly well-adjusted family in the foreground is quite remarkable. Though the story's trajectory is entirely predictable, the polished cast and careful handling should appeal to anyone who enjoys a good cinematic scare.

The Kid Stays in the Picture
Co-directed by Nanette Burstein who co-directed the fine On the Ropes, this documentary about the career of Hollywood mega-producer Robert Evans is as different as two portraits can be. After a brief gig as a pretty-boy actor, Evans gravitated towards production and was largely responsible for the resuscitation of Paramount Pictures in the 1970s. Evans delivers an often-hilarious voice-over narration of his life's story dishing fascinating insights into the inner workings of Hollywood and its power structure with behind-the-scenes gossip about the making of seminal films such as Chinatown. Superbly chosen archival footage coupled with Evan's irreverent take on the pictures makes this a must for film lovers.

Frida
Julie Taymore's beautifully filmed portrait of Mexican artist Frida Kalho avoids most the stodgy pitfalls of the biopic with a flamboyant design and a structure that offers context for the painter's work and episodic glimpses into her tempestuous life and two marriages with muralist and serial philanderer Diego Rivera. Salma Hayek, who has often been consigned to lightweight roles and who championed getting this movie made, shines as Kalho as does Alfred Molina playing Rivera. That's the good news. The bad news is though Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography (he filmed the powerful Amores Perros) is splendid, the music is exceedingly well chosen, and there are countless touches of great ingenuity, the screenplay doesn't work so well. Hammered together by a conglomeration of writers along with Hayek's main squeeze, Edward Norton, it fails to get very far below the surface. Hampered as the film is by being in English rather than Spanish, that problem is sometimes exacerbated by having these Mexican bohemians spouting dialog that sounds like it belongs in a film about mainstream, contemporary American lives. Still, for anyone with an interest in Kalho or Rivera, Frida offers rewards.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger
A series of articles that appeared in Harper's Magazine provided the impetus for this in-depth look at the career and machinations of Henry Kissinger, a look that leads many to the conclusion that he should be indicted as a war criminal. The film meticulously builds its case demonstrating how Kissinger has perpetrated crimes against humanity and engineered dirty tricks on three continents while creating the persona of a wily diplomat and revered elder statesman. Especially compelling is the well-documented case that Kissinger was the linchpin in delaying the end of the Vietnam War that led to the deaths of countless innocent civilians in Vietnam and Cambodia. One comes away from this film filled with revulsion for the man.

A Decade Under the Influence
The 1970s marked a tidal shift in the way films were made as the traditional Hollywood studio system gave way to edgy, independent productions. The socio-political turmoil of the era provided the creative compost from which sprang films such as Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, and The Last Picture Show. This well-conceived documentary consists of a series of interviews with the leading directors of the era interspersed with clips of groundbreaking films. Be warned that you will probably have a long list of '70s classics to revisit after watching Decade.

From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China
This astonishingly moving documentary covers the maestro's 1979 visit to China during its recovery from the devastating Cultural Revolution in which music teachers were imprisoned and all western music traditions were expunged. The interactions between Stern and Chinese music students are remarkable. In a matter of minutes he is able to take technically proficient but stiff Chinese students and infect them with his joie de vivre for the music. We witness an instant transformation in their playingóStern's impish and caring presence imparts the passion. Rarely have I seen such an immediate and obvious transmission of emotion, or better, soul, take place. This is a testament to the power of music as the universal language and as a means to achieve international understanding. No matter how cliched that may sound, there are some truly transcendental moments in this Oscar-winning film that hold out the hope for genuine cross-cultural acceptance.

Wounds aka Rane
This horrific, comedic Serbian film traces the lives of  Pinki and Kraut , two Belgrade teenagers, between 1991 and 1996, as the pair transit from relatively innocent adolescents to brutal, narcotized thugs. The film is intercut with sound bites from the Yugoslavian civil wars, but the boys are depicted as being completely apolitical and amoral while they perfect their criminal careers as apprentices to a brutal (and hilarious) thug. Their twisted, violent friendship reflects their country's chaotic descent into ethnic cleansing under the racist leadership of Slobodan Milosevic. Gut wrenching, adventurous, and non-judgmental, the film leaves a searing impression and is not recommended to viewers sensitive to intense violence.

No Man's Land (2001)
The Bosnian civil war of the 1990s was a Balkan catastrophe about which we understood little, and for which many Americans, cared even less. This near-allegorical story of that war concerns a pair of Bosnian soldiers who find themselves sharing a trench in no man's land with a Serb. Oscillating between savage violence and brooding, bitter humor, the situation grows more tense when UN observers and journalists become involved. This is a sad and wry depiction of the irrational hatred that poisons the lives of so many.

The Man Who Wasn't There
Above all, the Coen brothers are stylists, and in that regard, this somber yet comedic film noire delivers the goods in spades.  Eschewing much of the strangeness that has become their trademark, the freres Coen keep the story largely down to earth here. It concerns Ed Crane, a laconic, sad-faced barber played astonishingly well by a practically unrecognizable Billy Bob Thornton who delivers deadpan narration throughout the film telling us far more than his face does. Though the plot strikes me as a slightly undernourished homage to Hitchcock, the story is secondary to the intensity of mood rendered by Roger Deakins' superbly realized black-and-white photography and the indelible characterizations achieved by Thortnon, Frances McDormand as his philandering, boozing wife, and a host of other Coen regulars. Fans of classics such as Double Indemnity will find much to cherish here.

Mulholland Dr.
In the early '90s, director David Lynch managed to piss off a whole lot of people with his much-debated TV series Twin Peaks. After launching into a fairly conventional murder mystery set in a town full of strange characters, the series began to veer away from any semblance of rationality growing increasingly hallucinogenic week by week.  Mulholland Dr. shares that same trajectory moving during the final third into the realm of complete non-rationality. Viewers with strongly developed Aristotilean needs are bound to be displeased while those who revel in the non-rational and who welcome strange dreams will find much to enjoy. Briefly, the story concerns a young woman freshly arrived in Hollywood seeking a film career whose life becomes entwined with that of another actress in a story that has passing similarities with Conrad's Secret Sharer.

Testamento
In the mid-1980s, a wealthy Cape Verdean businessman dies, and instead of bequeathing his substantial estate and business to a conniving nephew as expected, his fortune goes to his illegitimate daughter. The businessman also leaves her a set of cassettes on which he has chronicled his life. The tapes provide transitions to a series of flashback vignettes in which we trace his rise from a barefoot immigrant boy to great success as an importer. Bright and lighthearted, the stories are featherweight and charming. Aside from giving us a feel for this West African island's culture and land, the soundtrack offers a good bit of the lilting indigenous music. The comedy is pretty broad and some plot points don't really scan, but in balance this is a pleasing little entertainment.

Who The Hell is Juliette?
The highly original documentary portrait of a 16-year-old Cuban child-woman, the film's kinetic, impulsive structure perfectly reflects its subject who veers between playful childishness and feminine seductiveness. Juliette and her born-again Christian brother lead a tenuous existence near Havana dependent on their extended family for support following the suicide of their mother and the abandonment of their father who lives in the U.S. Because many story lines are abruptly dropped the movie's non-linearity may prove frustrating to some. But for those who will stick with it, what emerges is a telling portrait of adolescence and the anger that comes with abandonment.

The Naked Kiss
Made in 1964, this is a strange and wonderful film by that auteur of B movies, Samuel Fuller. It is the story of a hooker who has been brutalized and exploited by men all her life and who decides upon moving to a new town to go straight. She takes a job as a nurse working with crippled children and embarks on a romance with the town's most eligible and very wealthy bachelor. Things seem to be too good to be true, and they are. Indeed, this movie never ends up where it seems to be going; Fuller's apparent melodrama is a highly creative examination of feminism and the exploitation of women. Due to the constraints made by censors of the day, there is a great deal of loopy, double-entendre dialogue dealing with sex and prostitution that at times is howlingly funny.

Time and Tide aka Seunlau Ngaklau
Though I am not a fan of martial arts movies, I found this innovative actioner from Hong Kong a delight, albeit a largely mindless one. The bewildering plot concerns a couple of drug cartels, a pair of lesbian cops, and dual, somewhat parallel lines of action occurring in Latin America and Hong Kong simultaneously. A more precise synopsis is pointless; the story lines exist as devices on which to string a series of thoroughly creative and breathtaking action sequences that dispense with most of the cliches of kung fu flicks. Ultra-caffeinated non-stop action is the central attraction here.

Judy Berlin
Set in sterile, suburban Long Island, this understated indie production concerns the stalled lives of a handful of residents on the first day of school that coincides with a total solar eclipse.  Only the title character is on the moveóshe's striking out for Hollywood to try and make it in the movies. Everyone else is caught in exhausted, failed lives brought into surreal focus by the eclipse which goes on and on. A deliberately-paced film that will prove rewarding with careful attention.

The Pledge
Jack Nicholson is back on track here after a number of going-though-the-motions efforts in recent years. He plays a Reno homicide cop who on his retirement day becomes ensnared in the investigation of the brutal murder and rape of a little girl.  He promises the victim's mother that he will track down the killer and attempts to keep his word despite the fact that the rest of his department is convinced that an Indian who committed suicide while in custody was the perpetrator.  Whether his quest is the result of his heightened ethics or the playing out of a mad obsession is left to our speculation. Actor-director Sean Penn's handling is careful and well thought out, avoiding just about all the cliches of the standard whodunit. This moody and haunting film ends without any neat wrapup.

Jerry Maguire
A film that proves Hollywood is still capable of creativity, this is the story of a high-powered sports agent (Tom Cruise) who suffers a crisis of conscience causing him to be canned.  The firing comes when he distributes a manifesto to his colleagues in which he argues that they need to take a more humane tack. Leaving the agency he is able to only retain one second-tier football-player client (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and the loyalty of a single-mother accountant (Renee Zelwegger in a break-through role) at the firm whom he barely knows. All three actors animate writer-director Cameron Crowe's smart script with brilliant performances and smashing chemistry.  This is a heartwarming and crowd pleasing effort that assumes some smarts on the part of its audience.

Hard Core Logo
This mockumentary about a Canadian punk band reuniting for a low-rent tour of the western provinces invites inevitable comparisons with This is Spinal Tap. But this is a much darker, meaner film, albeit one with plenty of laughs. The central conflict involves the alcoholic, domineering singer's efforts to pressure the lead guitarist into permanently reforming the band, thus giving up his chance to become a regular part of a major L.A. band with whom he's been subbing. Recommended to folks who find fare such as Trainspotting to their liking.

Odd Man Out
From its opening that employs a swooping aerial sequence, this 1948 Carol Reed film serves notice of its thoroughly modern visual sensibility.  James Mason plays an operative for an unnamed organization in an unnamed city (it's clearly the IRA in Belfast) which conducts a holdup in order to raise money for its operations. In the robbery Mason is hurt and spends the rest of the film hiding out from the police, often in near-surreal situations. With startlingly creative dream sequences and a cast of yeoman British actors, this film has lost none of its punch over the years. Highly recommended.

Medium Cool
Master cinematographer Haskell Wexler shot his cast against the tumult of the actual 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago in this highly creative, groundbreaking film that blurs fictitious story lines with real events.  A remarkable time capsule of a hectic era, the film is most successful in raising questions about TV journalism's ethics. Unfortunately neither Wexler's so-so script nor his wobbly direction of a shaky cast serve the more personal story about a journalist facing a crisis of conscience while becoming involved with an Appalachian woman and her young son.

Waking Life
Director Richard Linklater whose directorial debut was the audacious Slacker, returns with a film that is at least as radical in its conception, and far more daring in its execution. All the action for the film was first shot conventionally using live actors and then, using rotoscoping, converted to animation which shifts dramatically in style throughout the film. The central character is an unnamed young man who while in either the throes of sleep or a coma (it's unclear which) has a succession of encounters with characters who raise all the Big Questions. Though it occasionally grows a bit too talky, the sheer creativity of the images flashing across the screen will keep adventurous viewers engaged, and for the most part, the chatter is engrossing.

He Walked By Night
Moodily effective lighting and exquisitely realized noir photography by John Alton are key elements in this documentary-like crime drama that is said to have been influential in the creation of TV's Dragnet. The story, partially directed by Anthony Mann, concerns a perversely brilliant cop killer hunted by the police (including a very young Jack Webb) and is quite gripping.

Joy Ride
Director John Dahl's metier is the western highway. His earlier flick, Red Rock West, was a compact masterpiece of apprehension set in similar territory. On this joyride he explores the horror genre in which the boogy man is only fleetingly seen. The familiar road movie story has three young folks trying to dodge a psychotic ally vengeful truck driver who they've played a practical joke on. What sets the film apart is a series of creatively choreographed chase sequences and enough character development to let us care about these people.

Under The Sand aka Sous le Sable
While on vacation at the beach, a man disappears and is presumably drowned. The rest of this French film is focused on his widow and how, slowly disintegrating, she fails to come to terms with his death. In the absence of a body there can be no closure. Charlotte Rampling in perhaps her most riveting performance, is the wife who suffers from a big case of denial. Subtle and introspective, director Francois Ozon's film creates powerful empathetic feelings without any obvious manipulation of the audience.

Monsoon Wedding
Director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala) offers us a film that is both a derivative of Father of The Bride and a riotously colorful and chaotic  concoction inspired by Bollywood. In New Delhi, a couple is about to be wed in an arranged marriage and members of their extended families turn up from all corners of the world to join the celebration, bringing with them foibles and even dark secrets. Indeed, the bride has a shocking confession to make. Particularly successful is a subplot in which a goofy, hired wedding planner falls for a maid in the household and courts her amidst all the frenzy. The settings are exotic, the themes and familial dramas are universal, and an unalloyed joyousness will have all but the most curmudgeonly viewers smiling.

L.I.E.
Fifteen-year-old Howie Blitzer is suffering from abandonment. His nurturing mother was killed on the Long Island Expressway (hence the title), leaving him in the inept hands of his clueless, neglectful father who is preoccupied with trying to dodge a criminal fraud charge while boinking his live-in girlfriend in the still-warm marital bed.  Howie deals with ambiguous sexual urges, hangs out with kids who are much slower than he, and gets involved in petty crimes. Enter Big John Harrigan, played brilliantly by Brian Cox, a creepy pederast who maneuvers himself into the position of Howie's surrogate dad. Cox's portrayal is multilayeredóhe is both a mentor and a monster. First-time director Michael Cuesta draws uniformly fine performances from his predominantly teenaged cast.

Traffik
This 1989 six-part British mini-series was the inspiration for the U.S. feature film Traffic.  Like that Hollywood remake, it explores the complexities of drug addiction and trade from three perspectives: cops chasing heroin smugglers and distributors in Hamburg, a British minister struggling with his daughter's smack addiction while attempting to deal with the same problem on a political level, and a Pakistani peasant who goes from poppy farming to becoming the right-hand man of a major heroin exporter. It is in the last story that there is a major departure between the two versions. In the American release, the third story concerns a Mexican undercover cop. Perhaps the producers felt that the Pakistani story was too remote and exotic to be relevant to U.S. audiences. In any event, it is this third element of the story that works least well in the English version. We don't come to understand these Asian people and their motives nearly as well as we do the Germans and British characters. Nonetheless, this is a gripping and wonderfully detailed account of a problem that deserves the complex treatment it is given here.

The Town is Quiet aka Ville est Tranquille
 Director Robert Guédiguian begins his film with a slow, detailed 360-degree panning shot of Marseilles, the location of this patchwork of stories about working class life in that port city, giving us a sense of what is to come. The central story deals with a woman who works at an exhausting job packing fish and who returns home by dawn each day to a sterile apartment where she must serve the needs of her smack-addicted daughter and illegitimate granddaughter. Similarly, each of the other major characters is confronted with life-sapping obstacles that in several cases end in tragedy. Yet the film offers a glimmer of hope bookended as it is by the story of an immigrant boy seeking donations to buy a piano. Don't seek cleverly intertwining plots here; this a mosaic, not a tapestry of human struggle.

Spun
The tremulous lives of meth amphetamine addicts are targeted in this raucous rough and tumble comedy-drama. Mickey O'Rourke is especially authentic playing a crank chemist who periodically blows up motel rooms when his production methods get a little sloppy. With more than a nod to the design of Requiem for a Dream. Spun walks a perilous line between being a cautionary drama and a flippant comedy that exults in the drug-addled lifestyle.

Lost in Translation
As he grows older, Bill Murray shows increasing depth as an actor. In Lost,he plays an actor whose career has shriveled and who is now obliged to do whiskey commercials in Japan to keep his interior decoration-addicted wife in a manner to which she has grown accustomed. In the midst of his jet-lagged Japanese sojourn he meets a young woman who shares his ennui caught as she is in a sterile marriage. Their relationship grows slowly and peculiarly and director/writer Sofia Coppola is to be commended for avoiding Hollywood formulations. Her script expertly mines the humor inherent in its East-meets-West situation and the Tokyo enjoys an expertly lavish photographic treatment.

The Defiant Ones
Though this story of two prisoners, one black and one white, shackled together and on the lam in the Deep South may seem a little obvious today, Stanley Kramer's 1959 film still has a lot of impact. The action scenes and black and white photography are both handled expertly. Stars Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis are very good together though each struggles to maintain a Southern drawl that is convincing with Curtis in particular lapsing into Brooklynese all too often.

Children Underground
Reminiscent of the '80s documentary Street Smart that chronicled the lives of street kids in Portland, Oregon, this troubling film homes in on a group of Romanian children living in a Bucharest subway station.  Under the former communist regime, contraception and abortions were outlawed to swell the labor pool, resulting in a huge population of homeless children-óthe discards of poverty-stricken families. This is a difficult film to watch and one that will move the steeliest hearts.

The Big Knife
When released in 1955, the Hollywood studio system was already coming apart and this independent production scripted by Clifford Odets served as a harbinger of that development. Jack Palance is a movie star who is locked in a battle with a studio that forces him into execrable movies, threatening to reveal a dark secret that will otherwise end his career. Aside from the heavily muscled Palance who delivers the performance of a lifetime, the hard-working cast includes an especially memorable turn from Rod Steiger playing a quirky, domineering studio boss. Though some of the characters might come across as stereotypical today, the ideas posed here were novel in their day.

Dizzy's Dream Band 1982
A jazz lover's delight, this is a straight-ahead recording of trumpet titan Dizzy Gillespie fronting a big band of stellar musicians. The program puts an emphasis on Latin-tinged numbers; Gillespie was responsible for introducing Afro-Cuban elements into bebop back in the 1940s. Between-song patter reveals a man of enormous wit and vitality.

Elephant
Gus Van Sant's film is a speculation about what it might have been like the day the two boys at Columbine High School went on their rampage. The director chooses to offer no reasons for their act choosing instead a cinema verité approach that in the simplest and realest manner evokes the experience of being a high school student that infamous day. When the violence finally comes, the sequences are shot in a way that drains the action of spectacle and leaves us to formulate our own notions about what might have been going on. Van Sant serves up no easy answers of the "our violent society" genre to explain away what is clearly a senseless act.

Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
This powerful documentary examines South Africa's apartheid era and the role music played overthrowing it, using interviews, performances and often shocking archival footage. Despite the enormous suffering that this country has seen, what emerges in the film is the irrepressible joy of its black population-even the songs condemning and threatening the white-minority oppressors are set to lilting melodies with beguiling rhythms.

Chasing Amy
This slight slacker comedy by Kevin Smith, the auteur behind Clerks and Dogma has cultivated a following for its sharp observation of our culture and bitingly funny dialogue. Ben Affleck plays a comic book artist who falls for a fellow artist (Joey Lauren Adams), despite the fact she's gay and the relationship causes a rift with his lifelong buddy and comic-book collaborator (Jason Lee). The chemistry between the leads is dead-on, there's a nice balance between the serious and the comic, and, as a special added attraction, Silent Bob and Jay from Clerks put in a hilarious appearance.

Fando & Lis
Director Alejandro Jodorowsky created this astonishing allegory by shooting on weekends in Mexico. Its '70s debut at the Acapulco Film Festival caused such a furor that the festival was shut down never to be revived! As with his other films (El Topo, Santa Sangre, et al.), synopsizing the story is not fruitful. The title characters embark on a long strange journey in which parallels with Dante's Inferno abound. Fando is a an actor and poseur whose child-like persona we soon discover is a front for a much more vengeful, darker personality who constantly torments his more innocent fiancé, Lis, a paralytic who he trundles about in a rickety cart. The DVD version includes an extensive documentary titled Constellation Jodorowsky in which the director expounds on his art and life and in which we see him holding forth at a weekly psychodrama/lecture series in Paris. A must for fans of this iconoclast.

Beyond The Mat
Though you may put off by the rowdy circus that is professional wrestling, this stirring documentary examination of professional wrestlers and their lives beyond the ring is exceedingly well done. Focusing on a half-dozen established vets and wannabes, the film takes pains to show these people in the context of their day-to-day lives offering a humane glimpse into the demimonde of people who we might ordinarily dismiss as irremedial yahoos.

Gosford Park
Robert Altman, one of our more brilliant but also erratic directors, is fully in charge of his material here. A couple of dozen British bluebloods get together in 1932 at the titular estate for a weekend of shooting and backbiting. The story unfolds from two perspectives: that of the ruling class above stairs, and the phalanx of servants below. Altman is in brilliant form as he lucidly establishes the web of relationships between the guests as well as the goings-on that occur between the servants. Though there is a Christyesque whodunit built into the story, this is about as much a conventional murder mystery as Altman's earlier Nashville was a musical. In a cast full of capable players, the juiciest role is given to Maggie Smith who has a rollicking good time with her portrayal of an insensitive and resolutely rude countess.

A Beautiful Mind
It is dubious that this allegedly based-on-fact bio of the brilliant mathematician, John Nash, who struggles with schizophrenia, deserved the wild praise it received upon release. Questions have since arisen about director Ron Howard's treatment of his subject. It is said that much that was disagreeable about Nash is glossed over in the interest of creating a heart tugger. That may well be true, but taken on its own terms, and despite a tendency towards the mawkish, the film succeeds in large part due to the uncanny performance of Russell Crowe. His underplayed, subtle treatment of the part suggests some of the complexity of a character that unfortunately the screenplay fails to match. His ability to play his character convincingly over a 40-year stretch depends more on Crowe's skills than on latex and wigs. Jennifer Connelly is also excellent as his long-suffering wife, despite being saddled with an underwritten part.

The Royal Tenenbaums
Royal (Gene Hackman) and Ethelene (Anjelica Huston) Tanenbaum have raised three child prodigies and are now splitsville. He, a disbarred lawyer, has lived the past couple of decades in a hotel, and now broke, is about to be evicted. She has kept possession of the family's huge, loopy-looking mansion while all three kids have grown up to become adults with major issues. Royal wants to go back home and feel the love of a family that has turned its back on him following his bad behavior years earlier. Directed by critic's darling Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore), most of the laughs here depend on a dry, dark wit, and more than once emotional chords are neatly struck that we wouldn't expect to find in an ostensible comedy. In a cast full of talent, Gwyneth Paltrow is especially outstanding as one of the neurotic adult childrenóa playwright with a case of decades-long writer's block and some very secretive ways.

The Devil's Backbone aka El Espinazo del Diablo
With the release of this involving Jamesian-flavored gothic tale, Spanish director Guillermo del Toro, who earlier gave us Cronos and Mimic, is now batting three for three. Set in a ramshackle, remote orphanage posing as a Catholic school, the action takes place in the closing days of the Spanish Civil War. The orphanage houses a group of boys who are the offspring of Republicans fighting a losing battle against the fascist Franco government. Though a ghost is a significant player in the events that unfold, this is not a typical gothic tale. At its heart, the orphanage stands as a reflection of the horrors going on in the outside world and delves deeply into the imaginations and fears of childhood. As with his other work, del Toro demonstrates a brilliant grasp of techniques that shape mood and texture.

The Long Run
Though the script often is pedestrian and the outcome wholly predictable, this story of a South African track coach and his female protege from Namibia is an involving one. Armin Mueller Stahl plays the coach who attempts to rectify his own failed long-distance career by training her for the Comrades, a grueling 52-mile run. Their relationship is fraught with difficulties as the runner (played with strength by South African actress Nthati Moshesh) resists Stahl's domineering, all-consuming efforts. His lack of people skills come into sharp focus as he is replaced as a brick works manager by a young black man due to an attempt at political correctness by the company. In short order he also loses his company-owned home and his role as a marathon coach for several of the firm's workers. When for a time he also loses Christine, his last best hope to win the Comrades, his attempts to reassert his authority are clumsy and futile. See The Long Run for its commitment to the human spirit, a pair of fine performances by the two leads, and a glimpse into post-Mandela South Africa.

Storytelling
Todd Solondz who directed the controversial Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness (both reviewed here), knows how to make us squirm. His films mercilessly mine the most perverse and fatuous aspects of suburban Americans without a shred of sentimentality, yet somehow, Solondz is able to register sympathy for his characters and their dilemmas. As acidic and wickedly funny as they are, the laughter often dies on our lips as the director manipulates us into empathy. Composed of two assymetrical stories titled "Fiction" and "Non-Fiction", the first tale concerns a young college woman who after being spurned by her cerebral-palsy suffering boyfriend has a brutal sexual encounter with her writing professor, a sadist in the classroom and bedroom. It is that scene which threatened the film with an NC rating. Solondz refused to sanitize it for censors, instead placing a large red block over the offending naughty bits. (The DVD offers the option of watching the R or unrated version sans the red blotch.) The second story concerns a young man whose so-called life is the subject of a verité documentary. This segment lacks the sharper focus of Solondzí other work but is nonetheless engaging in its sharp ear for vapid dialog and self-delusion. For those who enjoyed the director's earlier films, Storytellingwill be a treat. Others should proceed with caution.

Ali
A common fault of filmed biographies is the tendency to try and cover an entire life in a couple of screen hours, thus reducing the biopic to a series of insubstantial vignettes. Though this portrait of Muhammad Ali focuses on a ten-year span in the flamboyant boxer's life, it succumbs to the same flaw. There are simply too many events and people included to permit any real penetration into the essence of Ali. And without considerable knowledge of the champ's career, Black Muslim history, and Malcolm X's tumultuous relationship with the Muslims, viewers are likely to be mystified by many scenes. That said, director Michael Mann does know how to shoot boxing and the half-dozen bouts he details are exciting though their outcomes are already known. There are also a handful of solid performances including that of Will Smith in the lead, who inhabits his role so well we fail to notice his lack of resemblance to Ali in the same way Anthony Hopkins became Tricky Dick in Nixon thanks to a command of his craft. An unrecognizable Jon Voight in Halloween-style makeup plays Howard Cosell, the celebrated sports commentator, who had a publicly-close relationship with Ali. Though he's silly to look at, Voigt nails Cosell's voice down to its most subtle inflections. Ali is worth a look if you have interest in the subject and were around for the history depicted. Otherwise, the documentary, When We Were Kings, which details the momentous Rumble in The Jungle fight in Zaire between Ali and George Foreman is a more revealing, coherent work.

Water Drops on Burning Rocks
Based on an unproduced play written by nihilist director Rainier Werner Fassbinder when he was 19, this is an uncategorizable film that ranges in tone from psychodrama to farce to musical comedy. Though the dialogue is in French, the setting is an unidentified German city in the '70s and is entirely played out in a bachelor pad that reflects all the cheesy decorative touches of that era. A 50-year-old pan-sexual businessman with seduction in mind brings home a young guy who is enthralled by the older manís virility. The film then picks up six months later when they have become a bickering, game-playing couple whose relationship is punctuated by emotional bursts embedded in long stretches of tedium. Not for all tastes by any means, this will appeal to Buñuelophiles and their ilk.

Our Lady of The Assassins aka La Virgen de los Secarios
Fernando is a Colombian writer who returns to his home town of Medellin after working abroad. He is initially shocked and later benumbed by the immense and violent changes that have been worked on the city due to the cocaine trade endemic there. He is a homosexual and soon enters into an affair with a teenage boy whose amoral stance and penchant for wanton street shootings render them an odd couple. Though Fernando claims to have come home to die, he manages to stay aliveósomething that can be challenging in Medellin. Shot in digital video by the eclectic director Barbet Scroeder (a Colombian native), the film was made largely guerilla-style on city streets without benefit of permits adding to its grittiness and power. The title is not apparently intended as a skewering of the church. Fernando, though he claims to be an atheist, visits a number of churches seeking peace and quiet unobtainable on Medellinís streets. Shot in digital video, the film suffers from the flatness of that medium, but creative camera technique that exploits locations for all theyíre worth make Assassins visually arresting all the same.

Swingers
The action plays out over the course of a few L.A. days in which a loose-knit group of young bachelors, intent on making it big in entertainment, carouse, visit trendy bars, nurse each otherís bruised egos, have heart to heart chats in coffee shops, and hunt the next romantic conquest. The story centers on Mike, a transplanted New Yorker still moping over the loss of his girlfriend after six months, and Trent, his confident, brash buddy. Jon Favreau who stars as Mike and wrote the screenplay clearly understands this milieu and peppers his dialogue with understated humor and irony.

Junk Mail
Roy is a Norwegian postman who is not too fastidious in his duties. He dumps large amounts of mail, routinely reads letters, and, upon discovering a set of apartment keys dangling from a mailbox, has no compunction about using them to nose around. It is this act that sets in motion some peculiar events that should not be recounted here. This is a dour, oddball comedy that rarely follows the expected course.

Year of the Horse
The indie director Jim Jarmusch is a big Neil Young fan which led to his making this part hagiography, part concert film, documenting Youngís 1996 road tour with his band of 30-plus years, Crazy Horse. Using Super 8 film and Hi-8 video technology, the film, like its subject, is grungy and technically unimpressive. As with Young, Jarmusch is concerned with getting at the heart of matters rather than obsessing over technical details. Especially telling is the counterpointing of a í96 performance of the eerie song Tonightís The Night (Youngís reaction to the heroin-induced deaths of his roadie Bruce Berry and rhythm guitarist Danny Whitten) with a performance from 20 years earlier. The earlier rendition is clearly better. Indeed, home-grown clips interspersed with the modern footage, reveal an artist who is past his prime though, on any given night, he is capable of distortion-drenched rock ëní roll mayhem. For those drawn to Young by his acoustic/folkie persona typified in songs such as Heart of Gold, this film will be a disappointment given its focus on heavy, sludgy rock.

Orphans (1997)
On the eve of their motherís funeral, three Glasgow brothers and their wheelchair-bound sister, all adults, descend into a dark night of the soul. The oldest, a priggish devout man, stands vigil over his motherís coffin at the church where a requiem will be held the next day. The middle brother is stabbed in a pub and spends the rest of the night seeping bloodóhe wonít go to the hospital as heís planning to stage an industrial accident to get compensation. The youngest brother sets out to kill his brotherís assailant in the company of a nut case. The sister is rescued by a group of children when her motorized wheelchair breaks down. First time director and writer Peter Mullan who has worked as an actor with Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and Ken Loach (Riff-Raff), seems to have been influenced by both directors invoking the crazed, comedic surrealism of the former and the grim naturalism of the latter. These diametrically opposite styles at times coexist uneasilyóoccasionally the humor seems forced and out of place. But as a whole, the film works, reminding me often of Scorceseís comedic and nightmarish After Hours.In the end we realize that the title addresses far more than the siblings new circumstance. These people have become orphaned from their culture, their traditions, and from each other. The film is appropriately subtitled as the Glaswegian accents are probably incomprehensible to most American ears.

The Others
With few exceptions, gothic/horror films today depend on special effects and makeup artistry to generate goose pimples. This film, directed by the young Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar who created the imaginative if flawed Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes), is one of those exceptions. Nicole Kidman plays the lonely mother of two children who have an intense allergy to sunlight and must remain behind curtains in the familyís creepy Victorian mansion situated on the fog shrouded French Channel island of Jersey. Set just after WWII, Kidmanís husband is missing in action and is probably deadóa fact that she seems to be in denial about. As the film opens we find that the previous household staff has left suddenly without notice. To say more plot-wise would be unfair to the clever scenario. Amenabar extracts wonderful performances from the entire cast and uses mood and setting, as opposed to gore and FX, to produce shivers. If youíre up for a creepy experience, this is a satisfying way to spend a rainy night.

Líennui (1998)
A 40-something philosophy professor who is recently separated, mildly depressed, and apparently going through a midlife crisis, meets a simple, plump, 17-year old girl and becomes obsessed with possessing her physically. She is a cipher. He plies her with questions about her emotions, her opinions, her life, before and after the rough sex which is the keynote of their relationship. Her simple, artless responses madden him and he grows increasingly more jealous and obsessed with her. Based on an Alberto Moravia novel, this is a raw, primal look at sexual possession with a passing resemblance to Last Tango in Paris. At two hours, the film goes on a bit too long with some scenes that seem repetitive. And some viewers will undoubtedly find the brutal sex offputting.

Me, Myself and Irene
The Farrelly Brothers have built a portfolio of silly, politically-incorrect, and more often than not, screamingly funny movies such as Thereís Something About Mary and Kingpin (both reviewed here). They have appropriately cast the often-annoying Jim Carey as Charlie, a milquetoast Rhode Island state motorcycle cop who is invariably pleasant, even in the face of being cuckolded by a black dwarf. As a cop, he gets no respect with scofflaws flaunting their disdain for his authority. His anger suppression leads to a full-blown case of schizophrenia in which Hank, a violent, angry Clint Eastwood-voiced alter ego emerges. As with their other films, the Farrellyís plot is little more than an excuse on which to hang gags that violate taboos left and right. Careyís facility with physical comedy is put to good use and the effervescent Renee Zellweger is perfect as his foil.

In The Bedroom
Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek play a happily-married couple whose son becomes involved with an older, separated woman with two children who is being hounded by her abusive, menacing husband. To avoid turning this into a spoiler, suffice it to say that a tragedy occurs that shakes the foundations of the older couplesí marriage. The two leads are marvelous in this wrenching family drama.

Iris
Played by a quartet of actors, this account of the marriage and love that existed between writer/philosopher Iris Murdoch and her Oxford professor husband, John Bayley is infused with the love this couple shared.  Told in episodes that cut back and forth between their courtship in the 1950s and the 1990óthe years in which Murdoch slowly deteriorated in the face of Alzheimerísóthe younger couple is played by Kate Winslett and Hugh Bonneville. The aged couple is portrayed by Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent. All four deliver the goodsóparticularly Winslet who does the best work of her career. While the story is ultimately a tragedy primarily concerned with the sad decline of a great mind as its focal point, much of their early years is filled with happiness and it is great fun to witness the free-spirited Murdoch bringing the virginal, stammering Bayley around to her way of seeing things. My only reservation with the screenplay is the perception it creates that Bayley was a bumbling, often idiotic presence. He was in fact a brilliant lecturer, essayist, and critic in his own right.

Meet John Doe
A somewhat under-appreciated Frank Capra film that mines the same populist turf which was to become the directorís calling card. Barbara Stanwyck plays a newspaper columnist who invents a non-existent everyman and then is pushed by her publisher into finding a man to fill her creationís shoes and hence further the dastardly political aims of the newspaperís owner. Gary Cooper is perfectly cast as the noble but naïve schnook she recruits for the role. Overlong and often preachy, the film still stands as a fine piece of Americana. The montage that runs under the opening credits is particularly well conceived, and issues such as corrupt corporate practices have a great deal of resonance today.

The Sacrifice aka Offret
At times infuriatingly slow and ponderous, this final film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky is a mixed blessing. The unforgettable cinematography of Bergman cameraman Sven Nyqvist and a somnolent score with Western classical and Japanese shakuhachi music are both perfect. The film raises searching spiritual questions that are ultimately ineffable. On his birthday, Alexander, a retired journalist, actor, and amateur philosopher living on a remote Swedish island, plants a withered tree and contemplates his own mortalityóit is clear that he will not live to see the tree flourish. He faces the ultimate existential questions when, during his birthday party, nuclear war breaks out. He makes a compact with Godóhe will forsake his own existence if the war can be retracted. This is demanding non-entertainment that is likely to appeal to those who appreciate Bergmanís more cerebral work.

Lantana
This brooding and sometimes slow-moving study of the trust that exists and sometimes fails between husbands and wives offers some fine, understated acting by Anthony LaPaglia, Kerry Armstrong, Barbara Hershey, and Geoffrey Rush. LaPaglia is a cop who is emotionally frozen and is fooling around on his long-suffering wife (Armstrong). Hershey and Rush are the parents of a murdered girl attempting to salvage their marriage in the face of this trauma. When one of the characters suddenly disappears these troubled relationships stretch to the breaking point. The flowering bush of the title is one which creates a great matted tangle below its floral exterior and stands as a symbol for the intertwined connections between these people, and an actual hedge that plays a part in the unfolding story.

The Blond aka La Bionda
A young shy Southern Italian man who is studying watchmaking in Milan hits a girl with his car, then takes her in when she claims amnesia. Hitchcockian in construction, he inevitably falls for her and is soon ready to give up his distant fiancé as well as his studies. Though we know heís headed for a fall, the film involves us in that gripping descent as the blondeís story is slowly revealed.

Chicken Run
After hearing much buzz about this feature-length Claymation film, Iím happy to report it deserves the acclaim it has received. Using sophisticated plasticine figures, wonderful sets, and the sort of lighting associated with live-action film, this is the story of a flock of hens who relentelessly attempt to escape the egg-factory farm that imprisons them. Theirs is a gruesome lot with the threat of becoming Sunday dinner if egg production flags, an ever-present reality.  When they learn that the evil farmer and his wife intend to plump them up and convert the farm to a chicken-pot pie factory, they redouble their escape efforts, hoping to learn how to fly from a circus-performer rooster who apparently has that skill. Each chicken is a unique entity ranging from the brave to the dim-witted. Indeed, they are far more human in their strengths, foibles, and intricate characterizations than are many stock human characters in lesser live-action movies.  Though itís G-rated, there are a couple of scenes that may upset the very young. (If you are as captivated by this stuff as I was, seek out The Adventures of Willis and Gromit, three short films by the same creative team and that first aired on British TV.)

Amelie
From the creative mind of Jean Pierre Jeunet who co-directed Delicatessen and City of Lost Children comes this wonderfully upbeat confection about a young woman who becomes absorbed in making the lives of her fellow Parisians a little brighter. French actress Audrey Tatou who is the title character defines the term gamin with a wonderfully pert look and a vivacity that beams off the screen. Upon finding a box full of boyhood treasures long hidden inside a wall of her flat, Amelie sets out to find the owner and reunite him with boyhood. This becomes the pattern of her life and the basis for this visually imaginative tour de force full of digitally enhanced details and bits of magic. Interestingly, Jeunet had originally planned to have Emily Watson play Amelie. It was only due to the British actress backing out shortly before the film went into production that he found Tatou, and it is now hard to imagine anyone else coming close to her performance.

Man of the Century
Johnny Twennies is a newspaperman and an anachronism. He is caught in a time warp with his 1920s-style values, rapid-fire and dated slang, dress, and world view. Heís the kind of wisecracking guy who was the rage in comedies of that far more innocent era. Johnny seems oblivious to late 20th century valuesóhe types stories on an ancient typewriter and gets uncomfortable when his modern girlfriend tries to bed him. There is a plot about gangsters but itís half-baked and merely serves to help move along what is ultimately a one-joke premise. But itís a good premise, shot in black and white. At just under 80 minutes the movie doesnít wear out its welcome and offers entertainment of a novel sort.

Changing Lanes
When two men have a fender bender on New Yorkís FDR Highway it precipitates a series of events that sends each of their lives spinning out of control. Ben Afleck plays a Wall Street lawyer on his way to a court hearing on a crooked trust he has helped construct. Samuel Jackson is also on his way to court to try and salvage his marriage that has crumbled under the weight of an explosive temper and alcoholism. Told over the course of a long Good Friday, each man is confronted with his demons again and again in this well written and taut drama that falters  occasionally, due to a certain lack of gravitas on the part of Afleck. Jackson, on the other hand, delivers the goods throughout.

Pretty Village, Pretty Flame aka Lepa Sela, Lepo Gore
The opening frames of this film re-create in newsreel fashion a pompous 1971 ceremony in which a tunnel project is launched by Titoís communist government in the country then known as Yugoslavia. During the ribbon cutting, an official slices open his thumbóa harbinger of the carnage that will follow the death of Tito. The story then cuts back and forth across four time periods focusing on the relationship between a Muslim boy and his Serbian pal who wind up on opposite sides of the Bosnian war and inevitably become enemies in a standoff at that same tunnel, now abandoned, that launches the film. There is a great deal of gore and tension that is punctuated with moments of surrealistic black humor. Though it is clearly a statement against war, the film seems sometimes to exult in the pyrotechnics that accompany the bloodshed.

Liam
Stephen Frearís portrait of a Catholic Liverpool family in the 1930s is at once grim, sad, and sometimes funny. Told largely from the viewpoint of the familyís youngest son, Liam, we watch the familyís descent from lower middle-class comfort to abject poverty when the father loses his shipyard job. This is a potent indictment of the churchís draconian teaching methods and seeming indifference to the economic upheavals of the Depression. Many of the scenes involving Liamís schooling and encounters in church are both horrifying and funny and will be particularly resonant with recovering Catholics. Uniformly fine acting and exquisite attention to period detail are distinguishing features. If you find this film a rewarding one, you should also try to see Ken Loachís Raining Stones which deals with similar issues in a more modern setting.

Wonderland
Directed by Michael Winterbottom who also made the excellent Welcome to Sarajevo, this is a gritty collection of overlapping story arcs set over a long weekend that involve three generations of a South London family with a particular focus on its three 20-something sisters, each undergoing some form of disintegration. In its bleakness and expert cast the movie reminded me at times of Todd Solondzí Happinessthough this film has a far stronger sense of place, being shot entirely on locations, often with unobtrusive mikes and cameras that capture the alienation and bustle brought on by the glittering city. Despite its heartbreak and frequent immersion into the mundane, the film arrives at its terminus with a glimmer of hope for this family that we have come to care for.

Acid House
This edgy triptych is based on three short stories by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh who authored the book from which the film Trainspotting was adapted. They all share a mordant humor laced with bitterness and deal with the fetishes of its author: drinking, drugging, shagging, fighting and football. Buoyed by a vivid production design and spot-on locations, each story has its own character and is driven by explosive dialogue rendered in the near incomprehensible slang of the Scottish streets and rave scene. Thankfully, subtitles fairly faithfully render a translation that allows us to follow the stories while enjoying the meters and idiosyncrasies of the idiom. Recommended to adventurous viewers only.

The Long Goodbye
When Robert Altmanís revisionist take on the Raymond Chandlerís final Philip Marlowe novel appeared in the early 1970s, it was lambasted by many critics for being wholly unfaithful to the original. They missed the point. Altmanís sendup was intended as a spoof recasting the knight-errant private eye as a baffled guy with ë50s sensibilities caught up in the swinging ë70s. (In a fascinating interview that accompanies the DVD version, Altman says that throughout production they referred to the hero as Rip Van Marlowe.) Elliot Gould is particularly fine as the stumbling, mumbling Marlowe buoyed by a supporting cast featuring Sterling Hayden as a boozy writer and director Mark Rydell as very funny Jewish crime boss. Forget about noire and watch this one for its wonderful loopiness. Like Altmanís other great films (granted heís also made some abysmal turkeys) this is one that runs on a masterfully intuitive mind that gives the cast and people behind the camera the freedom to improvise and create an unforgettable entertainment.

Salton Sea
Val Kilmer plays a tweakeróa meth amphetamine addictóinvolved in playing some very dangerous games with a parade of nut cases that all seem to be escapees of Tarantinoville. Rife with dark humor, preposterous dialog, and very funky crash palaces, this will prove a satisfying watch for folks who like their cinema served up edgily.

Vacas
Julio Medem who directed the excellent Lovers of the Arctic Circle, also reviewed here, made this film as his first feature. A meditation on love, rivalry, nationalism, and cowardice, it concerns a pair of families in the Basque region of Spain who are locked in a multi-generational feud that spans the time between the second Carlist War in the mid-19th century and the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. At times the film is a bit difficult to follow but compensates with captivating photography and the copious use of symbolism and magic realism.

Lakeboat
Originally an early play of David Mametís, it is based on his experience as a graduate student working on an ore boat plying Lake Michigan. The film is practically without a narrative structure instead focusing on the crew of the ship and their raunchy speech. A veteran crew of character actors with Robert Forster a special standout, meditate on sex, life, and lost opportunity while dodging any meaningful work. Recommended to those who delight in Mametís ear for workingmenís talk.

The Gambler (1997)
Very loosely based on Dostoevskyís novel of the same name, at the outset we find the great Russian writer teetering at the edge of bankruptcy with just 27 days to produce a novel or forever lose the copyrights to all his work. He hires a stenographer to try and beat the deadline and treats her very badly as the film intercuts between the novel and the surrounding story of its creation. Though numerous liberties have been taken with historical and literary fact, ravishing period detail and nicely handled juxtapositions between the outer and inner stories save the day. As an additional treat, the 1930s film star Luise Rainer who hadnít appeared in films for seven decades steals every scene in which she appears as a dowager who gets caught up in the obsession of the roulette tables.

Place Vendome
Though its plot is threadbare and doesnít generate much suspense, Catherine Deneuveís tightly controlled performance is the reason to check out this film. She is the widow of a jeweler who has committed suicide leaving behind a morass of debt and questionable dealings forcing her to attempt the sale of some illicit gems.

Spring Forward
A small film that makes big points, Spring Forwardís script is brimming with illuminating guy talk that comes across as a slightly pastoral version of David Mametís dialogue. The story is minimalóan older park maintenance worker (Ned Beatty) takes a recently released prisoner (Lieve Schreiber) under his wing, and over the course of the four seasons a friendship develops. Some may find this subtle story of ordinary guys dealing with lifeís vagaries too talky and slow. Others will find this male variant of the chick flick engrossing and moving.

Hannah and Her Sisters
If this mid-80s Woody Allen film has somehow managed to escape your attention, be advised it is among his best films eclipsing the directorís more recent output. Centered around the lives of three Manhattan sisters (Mia Farrow, Dianne Weist, Barbara Hershey) and their loves, tribulations, and extended families, this is among Allenís most perceptive and humane stories. If it can be said that he has created a story that is heartwarming in the end, this is it.

Italian for Beginners
This Danish comedy (coming from Hamlet Land does that sound like an oxymoron?) subscribes to the aesthetics of Dogma 95 dispensing with artificial lighting, dollies and the other slick niceties of modern, conventional filmmaking. Though some fine films have been made under these limitations (The Celebrationbeing a prime example), I think this movie suffers from such constraints. I found the jerky camera movements and flat video images a bit distracting, giving the film the look of a TV soap. The script and acting on the other hand are a different matter. The story concerns a handful of Danes and an Italian immigrant, all seeking love and struggling to deal with loss and their own imperfections. Though their stories are hard-edged and include some nasty characters, (one of the key protagonists is a dislikable hothead), the realness of their plights and the wry humor imbedded in their stories make this an unusual and engaging film quite unlike the typical comedy froth from Hollywood.

Y Tu Mama Tambien
This film, along with the estimable Amores Perros marks Mexicoís emergence in the new millennium as a world-class center of cinema. This is the story of two high school chums, one the privileged son of a government minister, the other from a struggling middle class home, who embark on a road trip along with the young wife of a philandering writer. The film delves into the lies and secrets that each of the trio harbors and tells their stories with compassion and wisdom. Juxtaposing raunch with tenderness, this is a spot-on an examination of the process of sexual maturation that puts similar U.S.-made efforts to shame.  Highly atmospheric, it captures the sense of modern-day Mexico brilliantly with many scenes in which disquieting police actions occur peripherally as our apolitical trio attempts to work out some happiness in their lives.

Sexy Beast
Ray Winstone delivers a convincing performance as a retired British gangster living out his days in the luxurious setting of a Spanish villa. His reverie is intruded upon when a former cohort from London (Ben Kingsley inhabiting his thoroughly repellent character with great gusto) shows up to recruit him for a robbery back home. With resonances of such Brit gangster films as Get Carter, The Limey, and The Long Good Friday, this is a tremendous showcase for the two leads and is rife with stomach-turning physical violence and psychological tension that isnít quickly dismissed. Disregard the inept title and discount the caper-film trappingsóit is a powerful character piece with some very imaginative production design and some playful moments that hit their mark flawlessly.

The Bed You Sleep In
It is a toss up as to whether or not viewers will find this film self indulgent or innovative. Shot in rural Toledo, Oregon in the early 1990s by the indie filmmaker Jon Jost, this is the story of a log mill owner who is faced with disturbing developments in both his business and his family. Jost uses long, lingering shots, a unique cinematic sensibility, highly saturated, vibrant color film, and a melancholic score to paint a picture of not just the central character, Ray, but also his environment. With some shaky performances from what appears to be a largely amateur cast, and a glacially-slow exposition of the story, such as it is, I can only recommend this to viewers with patience and a taste for the unusual.

sex, lies, and videotape
A decade later, Steven Soderberghís debut film that was released in the late ë80s holds up well. Preoccupied with themes of sexual repression and dysfunction as well as lying and voyeurism, it was made for chump change, and against all odds did great box office. Revisiting the film on DVD, I was impressed all over again with its exquisite casting. Andie McDowell is a neuorotic, sexually withdrawn hausfrau; Peter Gallagher is her philandering husband; Laura San Giacomo plays her sister and his illicit love interest; and perhaps best of all, James Spader is Gallagherís former college roommate who tapes the sexual confessions of women. The Spader character is the linchpin in the story introducing a fourth corner to the love triangle. Spaderís understated handling of his character is a delight. The DVD includes a highly worthwhile directorís commentary by Soderbergh joined by Neil LaBute, director of In The Company of Men, in which they chat about the vagaries of indie film production and Soderbergh recollects lots of piquant details about how the movie was made.

Tape
This claustrophobic comedy-dramaís entire 90-minute running time takes place in a shabby Michigan motel room. Despite that, director Richard Linklaterís handling of the material is kinetic and constantly involving. Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are two former high school buddies who meet up after 10 years and enter into a protracted sparring match about an alleged date rape that happened in their senior year. Leonard is an indie film producer in town for a festival screening of his latest; Hawke appears to be in a state of arrested development living on pot sales.  Uma Thurman, who plays the subject of their argument, enters the film in the final half shattering the stalemate that has congealed between the two men. An altogether wonderful examination of sexual politics and a friendship that has worn itself out.

Nine Queens AKA Nueve Reinas
Recollections of The Stingand House of Gamesare inevitable while watching this Argentinean movie about a convoluted swindle being run by a pair of grifters in which it is impossible to tell until the final frames who is screwing whom. The story is largely about a scam to sell a counterfeit sheet of nine rare stamps But nothing is as it seems. I found the early going in which the older con artist demonstrates to his younger henchman a repertoire of low-rent scams especially compelling. The action is fast and furious and every time we think we have an inkling about whatís going on, the rug is pulled from beneath our feet. If you enjoy maze-like plotting, Nine Queens is not to be missed.

Lonely Hearts (1982)
Not to be confused with two other films of the same name, this was an early work of Australian director Paul Cox preceding his excellent Man of Flowers,A Womanís Tale,and Cactus. It concerns a slightly eccentric piano tuner who, following the death of his mother, embarks on a quest for love through a matrimonial agency. The search turns up a painfully shy and inexperienced young woman with whom he falls in love despite a two-decade difference in their ages. There is a great deal of charm and no flash in this sweetly realized romance that is told in muted tones.

Beau Pere
What could have become a tawdry and exploitative film is treated with great sensitivity and imagination by director Bertrand Blier. It is the story of a child-woman of 14 and her stepfather whom she persistently attempts to seduce following the death of her mother. Their story goes in directions that are not easily anticipated and result in a tale that despite its potentially shocking narrative emerges as a gentle comedy-drama with winning performances by all concerned.

Pola X
This visually arresting, allegorical tale by the idiosyncratic French director Leos Carax (Lovers on the Bridge, Mauvais Sang, Boy Meets Girl) is a sprawling and messy affair that has been condemned as pretentious. Though Iíd be hard-pressed to tidily suggest the filmís themesóthey seem to shift fitfully within a chaotic narrative, I still consider this work in balance a success due to its fabulous imagery and heartfelt portrayals. It is an adaptation of Herman Melvilleís novel Pierre, or the Ambiguities in which a golden-haired young man (Gillaume DepardieuóGerardís handsome son) who lives in pampered luxury and enjoys success as a cult novelist abruptly throws over his idyllic lifestyle and elfin fiancé. The about face is triggered when he meets a wretched woman in the woods who says she is his illegitimate half-sister. Before you can say tout suite, they have moved to a cavernous warehouse in Paris housing terrorists and an orchestra that performs cacophonous industrial music. In his squalid new digs Pierre progressively grows more demented and obsessively embarks on a new novel that will tell the Truth with a capital "T". Recommended to adventurous viewers of the type who revel in stuff such as Peter Greenaway films.

Aberdeen
Supported with a pair of brave and truthful performances by Lena Headey and Stellan Skarsgard who play daughter and father, this film caters to my particular weakness for road movies. Headey is a young, Scots coke-snorting executive who is asked by her dying mother (Charlotte Rampling in a small but indelible role) to bring their estranged father/husband to her bedside. The father (Skarsgard) is an alcoholic and former oil rig worker drinking up his life in Norway. Reluctantly he accompanies his daughter back to Scotland in a journey that becomes a nightmarish odyssey occasionally relieved by sprinklings of dark humor.  At times the viewer will become completely fed up with both of these people who have failed to mature, yet each time that happens, they recall our concern for them with glimmerings of their humanity. Ian Hart plays a truck driver who attempts to help this troubled couple along the way and emerges as the only wholly decent individual in the story. This is a difficult film to watch despite moments of lyrical beauty in the photography. Yet like a bloody traffic accident, we are compelled to look.

Pumpkin
For three quarters of its length this smart little comedy-romance manages to tread a thin line between black comedy and quirky drama, derailing in the end thanks to a couple of misjudged false endings and a slathering on of absurdity and sentimentality. Its failures occur when the film oscillates between pathos and satire, unable to decide where it needs to be.  Christina Ricci is fine as a vacuous sorority girl totally consumed with beating a rival sorority when we first meet her. In the course of coaching a physically handicapped and mentally slow young man for a special Olympics, she undergoes an awakening in which she realizes the emptiness of her existence. Indeed there is a segment in which she discovers death, corruption and decay that parallels the story of Siddarthaís realization of suffering when he escapes his palace home. Apart from the fizzling wrap-up, this offers a lot of smart entertainment in the manner of Heathersóa film it resembles.

Petits Freres
Director Jacques Doillon has an uncanny way with child actors as he proved with his affecting Ponette, drawing out breathtakingly natural performances that support a childís point of view. In this film he examines the aimless lives of children at the edge of puberty who live in the depressing projects that ring Paris. The minimalist story centers on Talia, a 13-year old who is kicked out of her apartment together with her sweet-natured pit bull by an abusive stepfather. We follow Talia as she attempts to get by on the mean streets where latchkey kids emulate the older, more hardened teenagers who rule the roost in aimless rounds of thievery, dope dealing and casual violence. Sad and troubling as much of this is, there are moments of intense sweetness when the kids naturally gravitate back towards innocence.

Buffet Froid
Bertrand Blierís absurdist comedy deals with the alienation produced by a vast, sterile urban landscape in which an unemployed man (Gerard Depardieu) finds himself caught up in a series of shootings and other nightmarish doings. Whether you find this comic or merely tedious will probably depend on your attraction to the work of Buñuel, Bresson, Jules Feiffer and Godard. Its well-wrought design will be scant recompense for those intolerant of the surreal.

Kill Me Again
Before filming his excellent The Last Seduction and Red Rock West, director John Dahl created this highly derivative yet still enjoyable bit of neo noir. Youíve seen all the elements before: the washed-up private eye; the treacherous vixen; the double and triple crosses. Itís all here this time set in Reno, Vegas and the rugged Western landscapes that Dahl has returned to time and again. Val Kilmer as the dick ainít no Humphrey Bogart and the plot points are awfully tired, but great photography, a brooding score and a menacing heavy played by Michael Madsen delivers.a reasonable dose of the stuff noire-aholics lust after.

Scotland, PA
The Macbeth story is hilariously transplanted to 1970s Pennysylvania with the action focusing around a small-town burger restaurant in which the dullard fry cook and his ambitious wife scheme to knock off a local fast-food tycoon. James LeGros and Maura Tierney are terrific as the murderous couple and Christopher Walken puts in a singular turn as a vegetarian state cop trying to unravel the murder mystery. Shakespeare breaded and friedójust the way you like him!

Monsterís Ball
Billy Bob Thornton delivers another staggering characterization as a Southern prison guard who becomes involved with the widow of a man he helped to execute. Haille Berry as the single-mother widow proves that empowered with an intelligent script, she can deliver the goods offering a performance that goes toe to toe with Thorntonsís. This is a quiet film with sudden, shocking moments. It deals with racism in a wholly unsentimental way and handles the twin themes of loneliness and emotional paralysis with well-wrought dialogue, often allowing silence and body language to express the emotional landscape. Berryís Oscar-winning role includes an astounding scene near the end in which she undergoes a wordless transformation registered wholly in _expression and movement.

The Princess and the Warrior
Tom Twyker, the German director of Run Lola, Run and Winter Sleepers concerns himself a great deal with the meaning of chance and coincidence. He is also a highly imaginative storyteller with a refined pictorial sense who takes his scenarios in directions that canít be predicted. Sissi is a meek mental hospital nurse who first meets Bodo when she is hit by a truck and he performs an emergency tracheotomy, saving her life. During convalescence she becomes fixated with Bodo and seeks him out only to discover that he is a deeply troubled criminal who canít hold a job. Largely set within the confines of a psychiatric ward, there are some passing resemblances with One Flew Over The Cukooís Nest. But the division between staff and patients in this film is far more blurred as indeed are the connections between all the major figures in this startlingly original work.

Gangster No. 1
Numbingly violent and very stylish, Gangster No. 1 chronicles the rise of a criminal who is simply credited as Young Gangster and Gangster 55 at two different stages in this decades-long chronicle. The up and comer is played with simmering intensity by Paul Bettany in the 1960s phase of the film, and by Malcolm McDowell during the current era. David Thewlis portrays Young Gangsterís crime boss who is very nearly as violent as his envious underling but has a certain panache that by comparison serves to make him appear almost benign. The filmís chronology tracks the ascendant and descendant stars of these two hoodlums from the late í60 London scene to the finale which occurs in the present when the Thewlis character has just been released from prison after serving a 30-year stretch. Though there is lots of gripping dialogue and action sequences aplenty, Gangsterís real strength lies in subtle glances and unstated emotion. A subtle homage to All About Eve, this is recommended to those who enjoy British noire and who are not unduly put off by extreme depictions of violence.

The Last Waltz
On Thanksgiving Day 1976, The Band invited a stellar lineup of friends to join them in a final concert at Bill Grahamís Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. And what a show it was. Joining them were Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield and a host of others including two of The Bandís former frontmen: Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan. The 2002 digitally-remastered DVD is a delight with restored sound that brings this momentous concertóperhaps the greatest rock event ever­into your living room. Director Martin Scorcese put together a world-class phalanx of Hollywood cinematographers to create the beautifully composed and framed performances. His low-key interviews with the central musicians include wonderful anecdotes from 16 years on the road along with the rueful perspectives of accomplished musicians who have perhaps traveled that road a little too long. The DVD also includes a fine jam that occurred late in the show and wasnít included in the theatrically-released version. During the final minutes of the jam there is audio but no videoóthe 35mm cinema cameras werenít designed for the hours-long duty they had been subjected to and were at the point of meltdown requiring them to be shut down. As a disquieting side note, Band drummer Levon Helm, in his book This Wheelís on Fire bad mouths the film as being misleading. Guitarist Robbie Robertson, he charges, stole the limelight and the music publishing rights from his fellow bandmates leading to a decades-long feud. Helm says that contrary to on-screen depictions of Robertson cueing and leading the band, in fact keyboardist Garth Hudson ran the show musically. He also maintains that Robertsonís microphone was often shut off due to his tendency to sing off pitch. Most damning is Helmís contention that, in cahoots with The Bandís manager Albert Grossman, he stole the publishing rights and resulting royalties from his former colleagues claiming the authorship of songs that were the products of group effort.

Insomnia 1997 and 2002
It is interesting to compare the Danish original to the U.S. remake of this story about a cop investigating the methodical murder of a teenage girl. The í97 film is set in a remote town in the frozen wastes near the Scandinavian arctic circle, the remake occurs in the town of Nightmute, Alaska. In both cases a pair of detectives have come in to help the local copy solve the case. Both stories essentially follow the same trajectory. One of the detectives is in trouble at home as the subject of a corruption investigation. His partner may cooperate in the investigation, dooming the senior copís career. During a stakeout in which the murderer has been lured to a remote, fog-shrouded shack, the accused detective shoots his partner and then manipulates evidence to make it appear that the murder suspect did it. The surviving detective embarks on a cat and mouse game with the murderer and also with a local cop as he attempts to bring the killer to justice while covering up his own actions. Central to the story is the copís inability to sleep in the round-the-clock sunlight of the far North summer. In both films the leads are excellent but take somewhat different approaches to telegraphing the emotional and physical exhaustion of their character. Al Pacino signifies his inner state with a great deal of physicality while Stellan Skarsgardís approach is a more internalized and existential one. Likewise, the American remake often occurs in sunnier, more picturesque settings; the Norwegian movieís settings are unremittingly bleak. There is also a tweaking of the plotline in the remake that makes more of the potential for conspiracy between the sleepless cop and his quarry. In the remake, Robin Williams proves to be superb foil emotionally and physically with the Pacino character. While the latter is haggard and teetering on the brink of breakdown, Williams is smooth and self-contained, failing to recognize his own psychosis and culpability.

Calle 54
For anyone with an interest in jazz generally and Latin jazz in particular, this is a must-see documentary. Made in 2000, Calle is a survey of the various tributaries of this compelling strain of music with its roots in Africa and branches extending all over the Americas and beyond. Some of the more memorable segments include a kinetic, comedic performance by the late timbalista supreme Tito Puente, a reunion and duet between Irakere founder Chucho Valdes and his octogenarian father Bebo, and a breathtaking big band number arranged and conducted by the seminal Chico OíFarrell. Unlike Buena Vista Social Club which delved more deeply into the lives and environments of its Cuban musicians, the emphasis here is on performance. Most were shot in highly controlled performance spaces without an audience, which optimizes the sound quality while losing the heightened emotion that an involved audience can inspire. An hour-long documentary about the musicís history as well as extensive discographies of the performers are welcome DVD-version extras.

Wall Street
Oliver Stoneís film is a portrait of an avaricious stock trader (Michael Douglas as the strangely-named Gordon Gecko) and an ambitious Wall Street securities salesman (Charlie Sheen) who becomes party to his insider trading schemes.  Itís a glitzy late ë80s period piece that maintains its currency thanks to the ongoing greed that permeates all layers of the corporate landscape. As with all his films, Stone foregoes any semblance of nuance preferring to tell us exactly what to think and feel. Still, he extracts good performances from his principles with the exception of the execrable Daryl Hannah.

Such a Long Journey
Based on the excellent novel by Rohinton Mistry, this story set in 1971 India during the Indian Pakistan war of that era, succeeds magnificently in capturing the Dickenisian ironies of the novel. Dealing with politics, family, religion, and above all the sheer difficulty of living in a nation filled with chaos and grinding poverty. Wonderfully atmospheric with transcendent moments of sadness and joy.
 

Easy Rider
Itís a great deal of fun to revisit this ë60s hit that ushered in a wave of indie films that made it big at the box office. A making-of documentary that is included in the DVD version recounts how Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda set about making the film by going to New Orleans at Mardi Gras season with a gunny sack full of 16mm cameras, a gaggle of boho friends and only the vaguest notion of what their film was to be about. This first foray was a debacle culminating in several of the principles getting into brawls with one another and precious little useful footage being shot. Enlisting some script help from Terry Southern, getting cinematographer Laszlo Kovaks involved, and scoring a couple of kilos of weed, the crew hit the road again, this time with the semblance of a story. What emerged is a somewhat incoherent but fascinating fin de siecle of ë60s culture. Ominously enough, it starts with Fonda and Hopper scoring some cocaine in a Mexican junkyard and then follows them to L.A. where they sell the stuff to a dealer (played by rock producer Phil Spector). With the dealís proceeds the pair head off on choppers with the plan of retiring in Florida with a sojourn at Mardi Gras along the way. Their road trip includes run-ins with rednecks, police, unfriendly motel proprietors, happy-go-lucky whores, and most memorably, a drunkard lawyer played unforgettably by Jack Nicholson. Perhaps most telling is a side trip the bikers make to a commune that seems beset with difficultiesóagain a signal that the era of Love, Peace, and Dope is rapidly fading. An acid trip in New Orleans cements this death-of-an-era theme with clever flash cutting and photography that evokes the acid experience quite well. The powerful score is loaded with psychedelic hits of the day and Kovakís photography is gorgeous to look at.

Innocence (2000)
While some may find this Paul Cox-directed story of lost love regained a bit too precious, I found it truthful and moving. A woman living out her latter years in Adelaide is contacted by the man with whom she had a passionate relationship when they were in their 20s. Long married to a stolid, unimaginative chap played by Terry Norris (Blakeís real-life husband), she resumes the relationship reluctantly and with trepidation. Their rekindled love quickly blazes forcing a strained triangulation. Unusual for its depiction of physical love between a pair approaching 70, the current developments are intercut with dialogue-less scenes of the couple when they were young. As with all of Coxís films (including Cactus, A Womanís Tale, My First Wife, Man of Flowers)his recurring theme that love is everything is strongly registered here. Though I found some of the dialogue a bit fatuous and tending towards psychobabble, the inherent truthfulness of the story overcame this defect.

Marathon Man
John Schlesingerís taut suspense film of 1976 has retained all its punch over the years. Memorable for its dental torture scene and a finale in a water works, the movieís real strengths lie in the unlikely casting of Dustin Hoffman as a graduate school nebbish who likes to jog opposite Laurence Olivier as a Nazi war criminal who has been hiding out for decades in South America. Though the leads take diametrically opposite approaches to their craft, the characters they forge work well together. Discounting the rather murky and implausible plot, the set pieces and terrific location photography make this an entertainment worth revisiting. The DVD release is somewhat disappointing in terms of picture quality that appears to have been taken from a darkish print. As a plus, the DVD includes both modern and contemporaneous featurettes about the making of the film that are quite interesting.

The Sonís Room AKA La Stanza del Figlio
Inevitably this film must be compared with the equally excellent In the Bedroomwhich deals with the same subject: the devastation that descends on a happy family upon the death of a son.  Both films handle their task without descending into mawkishness and both are exceptionally heart wrenching. This film is a departure from director Nanni Morettiís usual work that tends towards the Woody Allen realm, focusing on Italian neurotics. The Sonís Room is subtle and knowing and dispenses with the directorís penchant for quirkiness other than in the portrayal of patients treated by the grieving father who is a psychiatrist. Though much of the dead boyís home life is seen to be idyllic, there is an unsettling undercurrent that concerns the fatherís inability to help his patients. There is also a low-key sense of dread pervading mundane family events leading up to the accident in which the son dies. I found the resolution, in which the family begins to recover from its grief, coming as it does from an unexpected quarter, highly believable.

Veronico Cruz aka La Dueda Interna
The title character is a boy born to an impoverished family in the Andean foothills of Argentina. His mother dies while giving birth and his father goes off to work in distant cane fields leaving Veronico in the care of a wizened grandmother. This is an austere film that is nearly as bleak in its outlook as is the terrain in which it is filmed. What makes the film appealing is the arrival of a schoolteacher who takes the eager but unschooled Veronico under his wing. While life goes on in the remote village, coups occur in Buenos Aires with repercussions that occasionally impact the town culminating with the ill-advised war against Great Britain over the Falkland Islands. A powerful sense of place created through magnificent photography and a haunting score produce an indelible impression. This is a rather obscure film well worth seeking out.

My Wife is an Actress
This lighter-than-air romantic comedy from France concerns a sports journalist who becomes neurotically anxious about the constant attention paid his film-star wife. Leads Yvan Attal (who also directed) and his real-life wife Charlotte Gainsbourg are fine as is Terence Stamp as her co-star and source of Attalís jealousy. Pretty to look at, the film has a couple of pithy edges that add a bit of substance while a subplot involving Attalís sister and her husband fight about circumsising their child seems a distraction. However, the interplay between the two families is well-realized and adds a warm, humanist dimension.

Minority Report
Steven Spielberg knows how to spin a yarn and does himself proud with this adaptation of a Phillip Dick short story. Set in 2054, Tom Cruise plays a cop attached to a police unit that with the help of a trio of clairvoyants prevents crimes before they occur by arresting the would-be perpetrators. Our hero uncovers a potential flaw in what the government touts as a failsafe system thrusting him headlong into a mystery in which he becomes a government target. One part Hitchcock, the film is rife with fabulous effects and interesting surmises about the nature of life in the mid-21st century. Unlike so many of the brain-dead entries we see nowadays bursting with hot CGI effects and bereft of original ideas, Minority Report uses its technical flash to further its ideas rather than as eye candy replacing intelligence. I didnít care for the under-saturated bluish caste of the film (undoubtedly intended to suggest a cool, digital future) though otherwise, production values are near faultless. This is a solid entertainment with some thoughtful overtones about preemptive crime control and the question of predestination versus free will that rivals Spielbergís Close Encounters.

The Ipcress File
Notable as Michael Caine's first star vehicle following his debut in Zulu, Ipcress, also incorporates a lot of the style and set pieces that became de rigeur in dozens of spy caper films that followed. Caine plays Harry Palmer, a myopic gourmand with a cockney accent and a cheeky way with his superiors and with the birds. Sidney Furie's director's commentary that accompanies the DVD release reveals that he was displeased with the original script and a new one was being written day by day during the shooting, leading to a lot of improvisation. This was a salutary thing; the film bristles with energy, terrific locations and unusual camera angles which takes full advantage of wide screen film and that are best appreciated in the DVD release with its restored aspect ratio. Aside from Caine's excellent, subdued performance, the film sports a first-rate cast of British character actors and much of its look and feel was carried over in the James Bond movies that followed, albeit more kinetically.

Beijing Bicycle
Although comparisons with Bicycle Thief are inevitable in considering this modern Chinese film, the story here takes its own trajectory while sharing much of the poignancy of the neo-realist classic. A country boy newly arrived in Beijing lands a job with a courier service and is issued a brand-new bicycle, the cost of which is to be deducted from his wages. Just when he has nearly paid off the bike, it is stolen. What follows is his indomitable quest to recover his bike from a schoolboy who has bought it at a swap meet. Set against the intriguing backdrop of emergent consumer culture in the Chinese capital and full of commentary about classes in this once officially classless society, this is an involving and well-realized work from the newly liberalized Chinese cinema.

Following
Director Christopher Nolan who made the excellent Mementocreated this debut feature on a tiny budget that in no way reduces the filmís impact. As with his later film, Nolan plays with the time frame of his story to keep us guessing as he spins his tale of a scruffy would-be writer who begins following people at random to develop material. One of his targets turns out to be a cat burglar who brings the writer along on some of his jobs. Before long the writer is caught up in a series of events from which he finds extrication impossible. We are kept guessing until the very end when we become privy to the intricate structure of Nolanís plot. Very clever stuff told compactly and masterfully.

Inheritors
When a curmudgeonly farmer is murdered, his will leaves his entire estate to seven peasants who worked for him, thus upsetting the class structure in 1930s rural Austria. Though it is perhaps a bit simplistic, the film examines the changing world order on a very personal level and does a nice job of developing the characters of each of the peasants as they struggle to deal with their new circumstances and the village bourgeoisie arrayed against them. The filmmaking is virile and often gorgeous to look at compensating for a lame murder mastery tacked on to the plot.

Thirteen Conversations about One Thing
Somewhat uneven, this is a collection of four stories about a disparate group of New Yorkers and their intersections with each other and with fate. Alan Arkin and John Turturro are standout cast members with Arkin especially good as a mean-spirited office supervisor who has neglected his family for his career and fires a worker simply for being too happy. Turturro plays a schmuck professor who is fooling aroundóthe kind of role he excels at. Clea DuVall is also fine as a housecleaner whose life is turned upside down when she is hit by a car. As with so many other films of recent release, the movie uses a disjointed timeline to keep us guessing, and the conceit works nicely here.

Speed
Breathless pacing and outrageous stunts together with a mad bomber played with gusto by Dennis Hopper distinguish this entertainment from similar efforts. A city bus is wired with a bomb that will explode if its speed falls below 50 MPH setting up a kinetic sequence of events. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves serve adequately as action figures in a movie with minimal brains and plausibility and plenty of gasps plus some mordant humor.

On The Waterfront
Elia Kazanís 50s drama about union corruption on the Hoboken docks includes the powerful combination of Marlon Brando as a punch-drunk former fighter, Rod Steiger as his ambitious, corrupt brother and Lee J. Cobb as the union boss. Resembling an Italian neo-realist film, the story revolves around Brandoís growing distaste for the thuggish ways of the union and his burgeoning sense of guilt over having aided and abetted the death of a union dissident. Whether or not he will turn government witness has a parallel with Kazanís real-life testimony against his Hollywood colleagues during the McCarthy era. The acting buoyed by believable, truthful dialogue and photography are first rate while Leonard Bernsteinís score comes across as bombastic. Another cavil is the upbeat ending which seems forced and is in contradiction to the actual events that inspired writer Bud Schulbergís screenplay which otherwise avoids the preachy, artificial norms of the day.

Lovely & Amazing
Though this dramedy undoubtedly falls squarely within the chick flick rubric, its wit and perception place it head and shoulders above much of the weepy fare relegated to that genre. The story is focused on Jane (Brenda Blethyn) and her daughters, Michelle (Catherine Keener), Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), and Annie (Raven Goodwin). Jane is a kind, concerned, long-divorced mother. Michelle is a frustrated artist in an unhappy marriage who takes a job in a one-hour photo shop when her husband insists she contribute to household finances. Elizabeth has a marginal career as an actress, fixations over her appearance, and plenty of man trouble. Annie is a prepubescent African-American girl adopted by Jane who struggles with obesity, questions about her crack-addicted birth mother and the rapid onset of adolescence. Though each character at first seems to be dealing with their own unique problems, it soon becomes apparent that much of their angst has roots in the same place: dissatisfaction and insecurity with their bodies and their lives. If you relish character-driven work, Lovely & Amazing should suit you well.

To Sir, with Love
Sidney Poitier delivers one his best early performances in this late-ë60s English film. He plays an unemployed engineer who takes a job teaching in a rough-and-tumble East London high school where the kids are biding their time until schools ends. Roughly similar to Blackboard Jungle, this film is a happier affair with the kids making remarkable progress under the commanding and dignified presence of Poitierís character. This is a charming period piece with a fine roster of supporting players including the singer Lulu as a student who sings the memorable title song, a top-40 hit of its day.

All or Nothing
Director Mike Leigh has made a career out of illuminating the ordinary lives of the British working class. Here his subject is a London family and an extended ring of friends and neighbors who live in adjacent, soul-killing council flats. A Leigh regular, Timothy Spall, plays a disheveled and benumbed London cabby who canít seem to get up the gumption to hit the streets early enough to bring in enough fares to fully provide for his family. His wife is a checke11r at Safeway, their daughter is a cleaner at a retirement home, and a layabout son specializes in putting away prodigious meals and flopping on the courch while watching the telly. These are not attractive people. Nor are they especially interesting in the usual sense. But through Leighís genius we are drawn into caring about this family through a sympathetic script spiked with interjections of mordant humor.

The Good Girl
The writer/director team of Mike White and Miguel Arteta who made the off-kilter Chuck & Buck a few years ago return with this winning comedy-drama that deals with stasis. In an eye-opening performance, Jennifer Aniston plays Justine Last, a 30-year old Texas woman who is paralyzed by the routine of her life monotonously played out at the low-rent discount store where she works and at home with her pot-smoking lunk of a couch-potato husband played with customary brilliance by John C. Reilly. Justine becomes involved with a troubled young man leading to opportunities and disasters for her. The darkly comic, tightly written script evidences an acute ear for dialogue while neatly dodging any sitcom tendencies. Aniston is a standout doing something quite difficult: depicting an essentially boring woman in an engaging way that makes us care about her.

Jules et Jim
Francois Truffautís early 60s classic about unconditional friendship is full of techniques that were novel in their day (jump cuts, hand-held cameras, etc.) that occasionally are distracting to today's viewer. Yet this story of a decades-long friendship between an Austrian and French man and the woman they both love is among the sweetest films one is likely too see while avoiding any hint of sentimentality.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
In this 1960 British "Angry Young Man" film, Albert Finney, then a newcomer to the screen, put the world on notice with his performance as a disaffected working stiff who turns the lives of his two girlfriends upside down when he strikes out against society. Director Karel Reiszís realization of novelist Alan Silitoeís script is both intelligentand grim serving as a harbinger for the coming disturbances later in the decade.

Claire Dolan
The icy and dark story of an Irish woman (Kate Cartlidge) who has come to New York and is working off her debt to a menacing gangster (Colm Meany) as a call girl. With a heart of stone she whispers erotic enticements over the phone to would-be clients and the sex that follows is grim, matter-of-fact, and non-erotic. Meany is tremendous as an outwardly jovial benefactor who drips with menace just below the surface. A difficult, stark film that illuminates the sex industry.

The Cement Garden
This is the highly stylized account of four siblings dealing with the deaths of their parents while covering up the death of the mother. This may strike some as being  awfully pretentious stuff but the mounting is striking and the acting first rate.

Erin Brockovich
Julia Roberts exhibits a range that her previous vehicles havenít allowed her in this film directed by Steven Soderbergh. She plays a twice-divorced mother of three small children who talks her way into a file clerk job with the small-time lawyer who lost her car accident injury case. Told in an uncharacteristically straightforward (for Soderbergh) manner, the screenplay is based on actual events in the early ë90s in which Brockovich uncovered the culpability of Pacific Gas and Electric in poisoning ground water in a California desert town. The well-wrought screenplay spends as much time dealing with Brockovichís struggle as a single mother as it does with her investigation. The lawyer, played by stalwart Albert Finney, is her perfect foil; their scenes together crackle with energy though there is no sexual attraction between the two.  Dispensing with the speechifying and big courtroom scenes that are the usual ingredients in this sort of story, Brockovich depends on humor and overriding humanity to make its points.
 

Diamond Men
Robert Forster with his sad face and dignified bearing was made to play the lead role in this story of a veteran traveling wholesale jewelry salesman who is being forced out of his territory while breaking in a callow young replacement (Donnie Wahlberg). Ultimately a character piece, the writing is good and the dialogue is well observed. An undernourished subplot involving robbery detracts a little from the story, but Forster continues to show why he is among the most accomplished and unheralded players while portraying a decent manóone who strongly recalls his role in Jackie Brown.

Keep The River on Your Right
In the 1950s a gay New York artist, Tobias Schneebaum, received a grant to paint and study in Peru. Driven by a fierce determination to understand aboriginal culture he ventured into uncharted jungle and was adopted by a rainforest tribe completely unfamiliar to the west. In later years he lived a similar life in a New Guinea village. This film, though not as engaging as its subjectís books, offers a look at Schneebaum in his 70s as he revisits Peru and New Guinea and connects with men he hasnít seen in a half century.

Blowout
Brian De Palmaís 1981 film is both a Hitchcock homage and a variation on Antonioniís Blowup which stars a youthful John Travolta as a sound editor on Grade-Z horror flicks. While recording ambient sounds outdoors one night, he inadvertently documents the seemingly accidental death of a leading presidential candidate, thus becoming ensnared in a suspenseful cat and mouse game. The story is tautly told and DePalma has a fine time telling his tale in a characteristically flamboyant yet controlled manner.

Freeway
Reese Witherspoon is a spitfire of a trailer park girl whose speed-freak hooker mother and abusive meth dealer stepfather both land in jail during the early going. Dressed in a trashy red leather jacket, (this is an update on Little Red Riding Hood) she goes in search of her grandmother only to be waylaid by the
I-5 Killer, a serial murderer played to the hilt by Kiefer Sutherland. This is one girl who he shouldnít have tried to screw with. Devotees of such female ass-kicking epics as Thelma & Louise. and Bound will find plenty to like.

Franz Kafkaís It ís a Wonderful Life and Other Strange Tales
This is a quartet of short films loosely based on four of Kafkaís absurdist stories, the best of these being the first, titular tale that deals with the authorís struggle to get the first line of Metamorphosis. on paper. Its brevity and Richard E. Grantís quirky turn as the tortured Czech writer serve to make a difficult film subjectówriters doing their workósucceed here. Though the remaining three stories are less engaging, Kafka fans should be pleased.

One Hour Photo
As a follow up to his psychotic character in Insomnia, Robin Williams registers strongly once again here as Sy, a nowhere man who works in the photo processing booth at a Walmart-like super store. Sy has no life and lives vicariously through the lives depicted in the photos he processes. He fixates upon one particular family whom sees as the archetypal good family. When he discovers that the marriage is a troubled one and that things are not as glossy as they seem, Sy becomes an avenging angel with disastrous results. A misstep in the filmís finale glibly attempts to explain away Syís problems in a simplistic  way which slightly undermines what is otherwise a compelling portrait rendered with a daring production design.

A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrickís adaptation of the nightmarish Anthony Burgess novel has retained all its potency over the three decades since its release. Concerning a not too-distant future in which morality is breaking down institutionally, this is the story of Alex, a thug whose ultra-violent ways are modified by the state through behavioral aversion therapy. Iím not sure if Iíve become more inured to cinematic violence in the intervening years since first seeing Clockwork, but in watching it again, I was struck by the many scenes in which broad overacting of the Monty Python variety are played for laughs, working the absurdist rather than horrorshow vein. Everywhere, Kubrickís corrosive sense of the satirical is at work. Malcolm McDowellís impish performance plays to this sensibility brilliantly. Oddly, the production design that seemed so futuristic at the time of the original release now looks to be solidly anchored in ë70s aesthetics and culture.

Ratcatcher
Set in the summer of 1973 when Glasgowís garbage men are on strike and the city staggers under the weight of rotting garbage and the vermin it attracts, this striking piece of social realism from first-time director Lynne Ramsay is redolent with pictorial details. Her protagonist, James, is 12 and lives in a crowded, run-down council house with his handsome, hard-drinking Da and still-young Ma together with three siblings. In the early going he gets into a shoving match with a friend at the edge of a fetid canal which leads to the friendís drowning. From that moment in the film onward, James wears the weight of his act on his face. Though he seems more sensitive than most of the kids in his neighborhood, James takes part in their cruel games. For him, a comfortable home is paramount. In a telling sequence he explores a nearly finished modern home at the countrysideís edgeóthe house is clearly idyllic to the boy. James marks his territory by peeing in an unconnected toilet and later frolics with child-like abandon in adjacent field of grain. Ramsayís experience as a still photographer informs her film: it is full of tiny details some tawdry, others resplendent that collectively provide an indelible sense of time and place.

Blast From the Past
This clever little comedy delivers the old fish-out-of-water story in novel trappings. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1963, mistaking a plane crash for a nuclear attack, an eccentric scientist (played with verve by Christopher Walken) goes underground with his pregnant wife in the elaborate fallout shelter he has constructed in their backyard. 35 years later their son, Adam, (Brendan Fraser) who has been raised in total isolation and impressed with the mores of the late ë50s is sent above ground to reconnoiter and get supplies. Hence the juxtaposition is set up between the fresh-faced Adam and his encounters with the ironic ë90s. Itís during this first foray that the jokes come hot and heavyóthe old neighborhood is gone and a sleazy bar with a neighboring porn shop have been built over the previous home site. Adam quickly meets his Eve (Alicia Silverstone in an annoyingly one-note, scowling performance) who initially assumes Adam is a nut case but finally succumbs to his charming naivete. The film becomes somewhat derailed in its final act. A half-baked subplot involving a religious cult that worships the family doesnít go anywhere despite some funny moments. A second plot device involves a government psychiatrist and it too serves to do little other than set up a car crash. Despite these flaws, Blast is in the final analysis a charming and funny trifle.

Gang Tapes
Shot on high-definition tape, this cinema-verité treatment of life in an L.A. street gang may well be repellant to many viewers given the unrelenting and aimless violence it depicts. The premise is simple: gangbangers hijack a van of tourists and steal their video camera which a 14 year-old would-be gang member then uses to record a summerís worth of life on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. The film uses a non-professional cast, many of whom are actual gang members spouting largely improvised dialogue to create what appears to be a highly credible look at the gangsta subculture. Strong stuff.

Roger Dodger
This dialogue-driven film is the acerbic portrait of a smooth-talking, glib-tongued copywriter who, following a breakup with his boss/lover, takes on the sexual education of his 16 year-old nephew. Roger is a sad and lonely guy beneath the bluff and bravado, and it is his story rather than the nephewís that is ultimately the stuff of this well-wrought, if talky film. Strongly recommended to Mamet fans.

Day of the Jackal
The search for a professional hit man hired to assassinate Charles DeGaulle is meticulously detailed in this Fred Zinnerman film from 1972. The well-wrought screenplay based on a Frederick Forsythe bestseller recounts how police and other government agencies in several countries joined forces to find the nearly transparent killer played with intentional anonymity by Edward Fox. Despite the fact we know that DeGaulle will survive, plenty of suspense is generated making it a must for fans of this genre.

The China Syndrome
Originally released around the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, this film about an unsafe nuclear plant and its corporate cover up seemed especially prescient. Indeed, one character in referring to the potential damage caused by a meltdown refers to an "area the size of Pennsylvania" being made uninhabitable. The story remains entirely relevant today with unresolves safety  and nuclear waste disposal questions. Jack Lemmon serves up a yeoman performance as a nuclear engineer who suffers a crisis of conscience when he discovers that safety documents have been fudged and that his plant is at risk of a meltdown. Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas respectively play a TV reporter and her cameraman who witness a near-meltdown at the plant and contend with TV executives and industry forces arrayed to suppress their story. Oddly, though everyone else  in the film pronounces the word "nuclear" correctly, the Douglas character insists on the bubba formulation "nookyular."

The Rules of Attraction
Almost too clever for its own good, this story of college-based sex, drugs, rock ëní roll and suicide starts at the end then uses tricky manipulations of time and points of view as well as some flashy split-screen work to flesh out what is in the final analysis a love triangle peppered with prodiguous collegiate debauchery and callow humor. Writer-director Roger Avary who co-wrote Pulp Fiction adapted his screenplay from the novel by the much-reviled Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) retaining all of that writerís venom. Be warned that there are no characters here who you will want to root foróthey are a self-centered, disgusting bunch. There is also a lot of gross-out humor belonging to the American Psychovariety rather than Animal Housegenre.

The Man From Elysian Fields
A struggling writer (Andy Garcia) suffering from the sophomore jinx and desperate for cash takes a job with a male escort service in this reworking of the Faust story. He finds himself providing physical solace for a woman (Olivia Williams) married to a dying novelist and he is later enlisted to help the husband (James Coburn) bring his final novel to life. In so doing, Garcia turns his back on his wife and child with fairly predictable results. Though the role doesnít quite fit Garcia, he acquits himself well as a weak man and the raffish Coburn is particularly fine in one of his last roles. This is an interesting brew of melodrama and subtle comedy with the added bonus of Mick Jagger playing the enigmatic, sophisticated owner of the escort service in a role that caters to the singerís strengths.

Risk
In this Australian import, a naïve young man takes a job as an insurance adjuster because he "wants to help people." He comes under the tutelage of an older adjuster (veteran Bryan Brown in a fine, scenery-chewing turn) and finds himself caught up in both fraudulent scams as well as a romantic relationship with a crooked lawyer who is in cahoots with his boss. The acting is top-notch and the locales are excellent in this sprightly effort that handily demonstrates that venality isnít limited to the Northern Hemisphere. The downside is that the neophyteís character is so spineless and lacking in direction/distinction that it is tough to care much about what happens to him. Enjoy it for the relish with which Brown plays the baddy.

Pitch Black
If you can overlook people doing some very stupid things in the face of scary space creatures, this variation on the Alien formula has some rewards for the sci-fi fan. A space craft crash lands on what appears at first to be a lifeless planet, killing all but a handful of survivors which includes a vicious prisoner (Vinn Deisel). As the film takes the inevitable then-there-were-none route, picking off one survivor at a time, it becomes an interesting guessing game to figure out who will surviveóthe outcome in that regard is unpredictable. Some solid special effects and a decent script make this a tolerable time passer.

The Book of Life: 2000 Seen By O
Director Hal Hartleyís contribution to the 2000 As Seen By O series, a collection of films dealing with filmmakersí perspectives upon the advent of the new millennium, is a typically oddball entry portraying the second coming of Christ played by Hartley favorite Martin Donovan decked out in a business suit and accompanied by Mary Magdalene. Jesus sets the Apocalypse in motion when he opens the fifth seal using a laptop computer with a video-game like interface. Satan is also on hand lamenting his final days on earth. Dispensing with his usual hyperealistic style, the film is full of blurred images and slowed-down film effects creating a hypnogogic look.

Life on Earth: 2000 Seen ByÖ
Malian filmmaker Abderrahme Sissako returned to his pastoral village to document life there at the end of the 20th Century as a part of the international series of films all bearing the 2000 Seen ByÖ title. Effectively, there is no plot, this being simply a document of a quiet West African hamlet on the eve of the new millennium. Yet it is endlessly involving as we witness time moving in rhythms unknown to the developed world. Wonderful vignettes focus on the difficulties of placing telephone calls in the post officeóthe villageís single link to the outside worldóand others depict villages coming to a street photographerís booth to have their portraits taken with a battered plate camera. As an added treat, the sound track lopes along to stately Malian melodies including the lament Folon by the internationally-renowned singer Salif Keita.

Far From Heaven
Crafted in the manner of a Douglas Sirk 1950s melodrama, Heavencasts Julianna Moore as an upscale June Cleaver caught in the mores of that decade and dealing with the revelation that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay. Unable to confide in her circle of matronly friends or discuss what is going on with her Type-A husband, she turns to her black gardener opening she and her family to scandal. Director Todd Haynes uses saturated Trechnicolor-like tones to evoke the era and employs color in his sets and costumes to evoke the dramatic developments operating below the surface. Elmer Bernstein supports the atmosphere with his lush, dramatic score while Moore continues to wow us with her extraordinary range.

Eye of the Needle
A solid suspenser starring Donald Sutherland as "The Needle", a Nazi spy with a penchant for knifing people who get in his way. Carefully constructed, the tension ratchets up all the way through to the final half that occurs on a desolate island off the British coast.  The Needle finds himself marooned there while holding vital information for Hitler. Well adapted from a Ken Follett novel, most impressive is the way in which the Sutherland character is depicted as an unstoppable force who refuses to be daunted in his mission.

Deterrance
Itís 2007 and the president is stranded in a Colorado diner during a snow storm. Iraqi troops, upon the order of Saddam Husseinís son and successor, have invaded Kuwait annihilating a small American peacekeeping force. The president, a former vice president who took office upon the death of the sitting executive, and who is now in the midst of a tough election campaign, finds himself in a rapidly escalating and tense international situation in which his advisers are at odds with one another and with him over the best course of action. Though this setup is entirely credible, its resolution ultimately strains credulity. But with a measure of verisimilitude, this low-budget one-set movie which was made for chump change offers a lot of tension with a fine ensemble of actors giving their all. Just donít think too hard about the logical inconsistencies once the showís over.

Carlaís Song
A Glasgow bus driver befriends a Nicaraguan woman who is suffering from post-traumatic stress i her horrendous experiences during the civil war between the revolutionary Sandinistas and the CIA-backed contras. The Scotsman, played with charm and energy by Robert Carlyle, on impulse goes to Nicaragua with her where he undergoes a political awakening.  Both a love story and a politically-fueled indictment of the Reagan administrationís effort to undermine the leftist government and reimpose the feudal reign of the Samosa regime, director Ken Loac